they sometimes communicate a crushing severity to stars. As thus:
MEN OF MOONEYMOUNT.
Is it, or is it not, a * * * to saddle the parish with a debt of
2,745 pounds 6S. 9D., yet claim to be a RIGID ECONOMIST?
Is it, or is it not, a * * * to state as a fact what is proved to
be BOTH A MORAL AND A PHYSICAL IMPOSSIBILITY?
Is it, or is it not, a * * * to call 2,745 pounds 6S. 9D. nothing;
and nothing, something?
Do you, or do you NOT want a * * * TO REPRESENT YOU IN THE VESTRY?
Your consideration of these questions is recommended to you by
A FELLOW PARISHIONER.
It was to this important public document that one of our first
orators, MR. MAGG (of Little Winkling Street), adverted, when he
opened the great debate of the fourteenth of November by saying,
‘Sir, I hold in my hand an anonymous slander’ – and when the
interruption, with which he was at that point assailed by the
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opposite faction, gave rise to that memorable discussion on a point
of order which will ever be remembered with interest by
constitutional assemblies. In the animated debate to which we
refer, no fewer than thirty-seven gentlemen, many of them of great
eminence, including MR. WIGSBY (of Chumbledon Square), were seen
upon their legs at one time; and it was on the same great occasion
that DOGGINSON – regarded in our Vestry as ‘a regular John Bull:’
we believe, in consequence of his having always made up his mind on
every subject without knowing anything about it – informed another
gentleman of similar principles on the opposite side, that if he
‘cheek’d him,’ he would resort to the extreme measure of knocking
his blessed head off.
This was a great occasion. But, our Vestry shines habitually. In
asserting its own pre-eminence, for instance, it is very strong.
On the least provocation, or on none, it will be clamorous to know
whether it is to be ‘dictated to,’ or ‘trampled on,’ or ‘ridden
over rough-shod.’ Its great watchword is Self-government. That is
to say, supposing our Vestry to favour any little harmless disorder
like Typhus Fever, and supposing the Government of the country to
be, by any accident, in such ridiculous hands, as that any of its
authorities should consider it a duty to object to Typhus Fever –
obviously an unconstitutional objection – then, our Vestry cuts in
with a terrible manifesto about Self-government, and claims its
independent right to have as much Typhus Fever as pleases itself.
Some absurd and dangerous persons have represented, on the other
hand, that though our Vestry may be able to ‘beat the bounds’ of
its own parish, it may not be able to beat the bounds of its own
diseases; which (say they) spread over the whole land, in an ever
expanding circle of waste, and misery, and death, and widowhood,
and orphanage, and desolation. But, our Vestry makes short work of
any such fellows as these.
It was our Vestry – pink of Vestries as it is – that in support of
its favourite principle took the celebrated ground of denying the
existence of the last pestilence that raged in England, when the
pestilence was raging at the Vestry doors. Dogginson said it was
plums; Mr. Wigsby (of Chumbledon Square) said it was oysters; Mr.
Magg (of Little Winkling Street) said, amid great cheering, it was
the newspapers. The noble indignation of our Vestry with that un-
English institution the Board of Health, under those circumstances,
yields one of the finest passages in its history. It wouldn’t hear
of rescue. Like Mr. Joseph Miller’s Frenchman, it would be drowned
and nobody should save it. Transported beyond grammar by its
kindled ire, it spoke in unknown tongues, and vented unintelligible
bellowings, more like an ancient oracle than the modern oracle it
is admitted on all hands to be. Rare exigencies produce rare
things; and even our Vestry, new hatched to the woful time, came
forth a greater goose than ever.
But this, again, was a special occasion. Our Vestry, at more
ordinary periods, demands its meed of praise.